Alabama’s legislature is now in special session. Senator Scott Beason (R-Gardendale) has introduced a bill to provide for registration by party in Alabama. By coincidence, in the special session, the new bill is SB 15, which happens to be the number of this year’s ballot access bill in the regular session (the regular session is now over, so the original SB 15 is dead).

The new SB 15 says that only registered party members may vote in primaries. This is a legal flaw, because in 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that states have no authority to tell parties whether to let independents vote in their primaries or not. Parties decide that for themselves.

The new SB 15 has been sent to the Taxation & Finance Committee, but is not scheduled for a hearing. However, the bill probably has substantial support, because in order for this bill to be introduced, Senator Beason had to have unanimous consent. Election law bills are not on the Governor’s call for the special session, so the special session can only consider election law bills that have unanimous consent to be introduced. It seems conceivable that Senator Cam Ward, author of the ballot access bill, might attempt to gain unanimous consent to re-introduce his ballot access bill. It did pass the Senate and the House committee in the regular session, so it has substantial support.

The new SB 15, on party registration, seems to imply that voters could register into unqualified parties. It has no authorization for any party to reject any voter’s registration. Current law in Alabama gives parties the ability to refuse to let individuals run in its primaries for political reasons. If this bill passed, and someone registers into a party, and files in its primary, that might make it impossible for major parties to continue to exclude certain candidates from their primaries on political grounds, if that person is a registered member of that party.

The bill does not address the question of whether someone must be a registered member of a party in order to file in its primary.

The author of the voter registration bill, Senator Beason, did vote in favor of the regular session’s ballot access bill. Perhaps he will amend his bill to include ballot access improvements as well.